


a curious speck, in orbit

by SilverZelenia



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Astronomy, Family Bonding, Found Family, M/M, POV Nile Freeman, but like... joe is center stage, hc that nile's little brother is named jordan bc hELLO, joe can have a little existential crisis (as a treat), mild angst that ends with family fluff, nile makes millenial jokes and no one else gets them, saturn jupiter conjunction, this sounds really angsty but it's really just...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28307028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverZelenia/pseuds/SilverZelenia
Summary: “Being unable to die and living are not the same,” Nicky says softly, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes flicker over the collection of whiskey bottles that still live high up on their cabinets, knows exactly who he’s thinking of when he says the words. “It is difficult, sometimes, not getting lost in the surviving. For all of us, I expect.”Then he smiles that same soft-sad way again, and he disappears into the back of the cabin, and Nile feels more confused than she was before because she cannot imagine Joe - the man with multicolored paint stains on half his wardrobe, who frequently smears the countertops of their safehouses with charcoal on his arms that he does not notice until Nicky takes objection, who has beaming smiles and warm conversations for almost everyone they meet in so many languages Nile has lost count - she cannot imagine that man ever having difficulty finding life over survival. That man, the one she has come to know over months of relative peace, the one who is so different from the exhausted soldier she had met in the beginning - he is so full of life it bleeds from him in everything that he does.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 14
Kudos: 146





	a curious speck, in orbit

**Author's Note:**

> TOG fandom has so many great writers I am beyond terrified to post this lmao please be kind
> 
> Title is a lyric from Jupiter by Sleeping At Last!

“What’s Joe doing?” Nile asks.

It is the evening of December 21st, right after sunset, and they are settling into the safe house they’re going to be staying in for the foreseeable future. Home, for now, is this cabin in up-state New York in the Adirondacks. They took five wrong turns in the process of finding the right road but still hadn’t come across another residence, and Nile has never felt further removed from society. Aside from the modern heating and appliances, the place is pretty Spartan. (Nile had voiced this tongue in cheek thought to Andy - the only person on Earth who might could actually say what the Spartans’ sense of home decor had really been like - and the deadpan stare she’d received in response could have frozen a glacier.)

All of their bags have already been moved into the cabin, which didn’t take more than a single trip between them all. The bulk of their luggage takes the form of weapons, which is a new aspect of life that Nile is still getting used to military background or not. She had ended up with Andy, sorting them all into whatever storage location the older woman deemed appropriate. Whatever process or reasoning she was using to make these decisions, Nile didn’t know, but she could hardly pass judgement when the names of half the weapons in their arsenal still eluded her.

By the time the two of them were done and Andy banished her from the room in search of sorely needed sleep, Nicky was already at work in the tiny kitchen, concocting some kind of elaborate dish. One unforeseen aspect of living with centuries-old beings was constantly eating foods that were a mystery to her and probably every other living being on Earth; unless they were on the go, eating whatever cheap food was nearest, Nile couldn't remember the last time she’d looked at her plate and knew the name of the dish. She’d given up on guessing since it was always delicious anyway.

She looks out the window and finds the man in question silhouetted on the deck outside, neck craned up toward the sky. At the sound of her voice, Nicky walks over to her side - hands held carefully aloft, still coated in flour - and looks for a moment. He watches his lover silently, head tilted just slightly, and then his lips quirk slightly - a hint of a smile, but not quite a happy one.

“He is remembering,” Nicky hums quietly.

Nile’s eyebrows draw together, and she bites back the instinctive _wow, that’s very illuminating, thank you_ as the man moves back into the kitchen, as if that actually answered her question. (Nicky does that sometimes, and it always takes her a moment to remember that she’s not talking to her little brother, this is not Jordan and he’s not being evasive on purpose, _don’t snark back a ‘gee thanks’ like you would have before_ \- _before._ )

“Remembering… something specific?” She ventures, desperate for clarity just this once, because sometimes a girl just wants a goddamn straight answer.

Immortality comes with lots of baggage, Nile has realized. Sometimes it is easy to see where the gaping wounds are, easy to sidestep them like she’s a young girl again hopping over cracks in the sidewalk singing _don’t break mama’s back_ . The day she found a copy of Don Quixote tucked into one of their bags with an unsigned note, _je suis désolé;_ that was an obvious one. She had tucked the note and the book both back under Andy’s clothes, a bomb left to defuse on another day.

Sometimes it’s more subtle. Sometimes the baggage comes in forms Nile doesn’t have the context to recognize, and she’s left tiptoeing around the landmines without all the information she needs to truly know where it is safe to set her feet. These are the ones that get her - the innocent question about the ancient bow she finds in their little armory, the way the words land on Andy like a physical blow, the soft _no one_ she had answered with, the way Nicky had been the one to tell Nile that Quynh was an archer. The way a small army of empty vodka bottles appeared in the trash bin the next night and each of them chose not to bring it up.

When she pushes - sees the deep sigh roll through Nicky’s shoulders before he faces her again - it sparks the feeling that she’s walked right into one of those hidden traps, but Nile is tired of walking on eggshells. So she doesn’t slink out of the room, doesn’t change the subject. She just waits, quiet and patient, until he can come up with an answer.

Nicky doesn’t rush it. He takes his sweet time, in fact - wipes the mess off the counter, washes his hands, dries them on the bear print hand towel he’s dug up from god knows where. She starts to wonder if he’s testing her and her willingness to wait, but finally - as is usually the case with Nicky - she is rewarded for her patience when he turns his undivided attention on her.

“Being unable to die and _living_ are not the same,” Nicky says softly, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes flicker over the collection of whiskey bottles that still live high up on their cabinets, knows exactly who he’s thinking of when he says the words. “It is difficult, sometimes, not getting lost in the surviving. For all of us, I expect.”

Then he smiles that same soft-sad way again, and he disappears into the back of the cabin, and Nile feels more confused than she was before because she cannot imagine Joe - the man with multicolored paint stains on half his wardrobe, who frequently smears the countertops of their safehouses with charcoal on his arms that he does not notice until Nicky takes objection, who has beaming smiles and warm conversations for almost everyone they meet in so many languages Nile has lost count - she cannot imagine _that man_ ever having difficulty finding life over survival. That man, the one she has come to know over months of relative peace, the one who is so different from the exhausted soldier she had met in the beginning - he is so full of life it bleeds from him in everything that he does.

So Nile does what she always does when something confuses her: she chases after it.

It’s cold outside, cold enough that her breath clouds the air and she wraps her arms around herself instinctively. Joe doesn’t seem to have noticed the temperature any more than he notices the glass doors sliding open as she joins him. He doesn’t say anything, so she just looks up at the sky with him in silence.

Her patience runs out before his does, unsurprisingly. 

“Are you watching for Jupiter and Saturn?” she asks, casting a sideways glance at him.

They’ve each been hearing the same reports on it, day in and day out in the van driving here, because Joe is the type of person who likes to listen to NPR all the time, the type who gets genuinely invested in each and every obscure topic they cover. He is also not above using Nicky as a back-up vote to outnumber Andy’s complaints two-to-one, an ongoing argument Nile is content to pretend she cannot hear when she sticks her earbuds in to listen to music instead, until Nicky has successfully redirected Andy’s ire away from Joe’s radio monopoly by making an offhand comment like _that new American baklava is so much better than the original,_ and then she really is cranking the music up to drown out the enraged ranting that follows. Road trips are the same, it seems, no matter if your family is immortal or not.

“I read an article this morning that said the last time you could see this thing from Earth was 1226,” Nile offers a moment later. “Do you… remember it? Is it something people would have noticed then?”

Joe exhales, long and deep, and looks back down to Earth finally.

“The great astronomers noticed, I am sure,” he says.

“But you didn’t?” She asks, though the answer seems obvious already.

“If I did then, I do not remember it now. Most of what I recall of the year 1226 is being on the run after the fall of Tbilisi. We tried to smuggle as many out as we could, but it did not amount to much in the end. Just enough to be chased for months and months after.”

He must see her poorly-concealed look of confusion, but for once he does not seem like he wants to explain or teach.

“Jalal ad-Din. The Hundred Thousand Martyrs of Tbilisi,” he sighs. “Google it.”

Nile swallows the bitter taste of ignorance easily; she’s had a lot of practice lately. Every day of her new life feels like a lesson in how much she simply does not know of the world and all its history. There are times when it really sinks in how old her companions are, and tonight is one of them. She cannot imagine how it feels to know that only two people on Earth are older than you - _dreads the day that she learns it_ \- but she thinks she can see every one of Joe’s years reflected upon him here in the half light.

“It bothers you that you can’t remember the last conjunction?”

“Yes. _No_ ,” Joe starts, and then he stops and starts again and Nile wonders at this - the first time she has ever seen him at a loss for words. “It bothers me when I cannot remember what my life was outside of our battles. It bothers me that there are only so many things I can commit to ink or canvas, and so many memories that I forget between each of them.”

“The little things,” Nile says softly.

“The little things,” Joe hums in agreement. “Like when two planets shine a little brighter in the sky and people everywhere watch for it, together. I do not want to forget the moments like this, and only remember the struggles.”

They are quiet for a moment, staring up at the sky together. It is not the shimmery, beautiful view of a twinkling galaxy - instead it is opaque, blanketed in pale clouds between them and the stars. She feels at a loss for words; most days it still does not feel real how old Joe is, and she doesn't know how to comfort someone who has seen so much more of life than she can even comprehend.

The silence looms heavy between them, so Nile does what her generation is best at: she fills it.

“Well,” she says teasingly. “In fairness to you, I guess our definition of once in a lifetime has a bit more stretch to it than it does for most people.”

She shifts her weight slightly, leans over so her shoulder bumps his a little, and it makes her feel better when she sees the corner of his lip quirk up into a reluctant grin. Behind them, the cabin door slides open again, and Andy’s voice rings out suddenly.

“What in the fuck are you two out here freezing for?”

Nile snorts, and she sees Joe duck his head down with a fond look.

“We’re getting cockblocked by clouds,” she says, and feels a moment of elated victory when their leader’s face dances through five different shades of complete and utter confusion.

It is fun to be the vague and unhelpful one for once - she can see why Nicky does it so often.

“What, you’re looking for that star shit?” Andy demands, casting an unimpressed look up above them.

“They’re planets,” Joe and Nile correct her in tandem, an echo of each other.

She hears Nicky’s soft huff of laughter behind them as he approaches.

“But that was the idea, yeah,” Nile says. “Sky’s not feeling real cooperative, though.”

Nicky steps up at Joe’s other side, tucking an arm around his lover, and the tension that was remaining in Joe’s shoulders melts away as they lean into each other.

“Look up,” the blond hums, and they all do.

Above them, the clouds have parted, and Jupiter and Saturn are gleaming brightly side by side.

“Yep,” Andy says, rolling her eyes, as if they cannot all hear the fondness in her voice. “That is the sky alright.”

And the other three - shoulder to shoulder - share equally fond laughter, and they let the eldest lead the way back to the kitchen where dinner is waiting for them, bickering lightheartedly every step of the way.

Nile finds herself back in that same spot alone four days later.

It is Christmas Day, and it is the first time in her entire life she is doing _nothing_ to celebrate it, and she is surprisingly emotional about it. In her new family, there is no one with an attachment to the holiday but her. Andy predates almost every holiday on the calendar, and she looks at the neon decorations they pass like Nile would look at a burnt spot on a muffin; there is Nicky who is Christian but was born centuries too soon for the trees and carols and candle services she was raised with; and there is Joe who seems to have a respect for the joy the holiday brings other people but has no connection to it himself.

For them, December 25th 2020 is just another day in a long line of them.

For Nile, it is a reminder of the family she has been forced to leave behind.

Somehow, she finds herself sitting cross legged on the cabin deck, staring up at the same spot in the sky she and Joe had watched together days prior. She doesn’t hear the door slide open behind her, doesn’t notice the footsteps approaching until a steaming cup is held in front of her face. A very familiar style of cup, she realizes after going cross eyed staring at it.

It is Joe, with an obviously piping hot Starbucks drink held out for her to take.

“ _Do not_ tell Nicky,” he warns with a stern look.

Then he smiles at her as her hands close around it, wordless, and as he leaves she wonders vaguely how she ended up at a place in life that this is all it takes to render her speechless. She thinks back to the one and only time she’d asked for a Starbucks stop on one of their drives, the disgusted look on Nicky’s face and the impassioned hours-long rant about bad coffee and ‘highway robbery’ that had followed.

She stares at the cup between her hands, feeling warm in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature of the drink.

 _Grande hot choc add peppermint_ , reads the label.

 _Carry the merry_ , reads the festive design of the Christmas cup.

Nile smiles into her first sip.

 _Yeah_ , she thinks. _It is the little things_.

**Author's Note:**

> Had this idea before the Great Conjunction, bc I think Joe would be into stuff like that. Meant to post it the day of but life suuucks rn so here I am... predictably late. Anyway let me know what you think even if it's that I butchered Joe's voice! (I tried, man...)
> 
> I'm @andromaqves on tumblr!


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